European Published Patent No. 0 976 627 discusses a braking control for a vehicle. If a radar system of a vehicle having braking control detects an object in front of the vehicle, then an estimating device judges the probability that the vehicle will collide with the object. If the estimation judgment reveals that a collision probability exists, then an automatic braking unit brings about an automatic braking to avoid an imminent collision. If, during the automatic braking, a driver-activated braking input is detected, then the urgency of the driver braking is estimated and the automatic braking control generates a braking force which corresponds to the driver input. A gentle transition from the automatic braking to the driver-controlled braking thereby results.
German Published Patent No. 38 30 790 discusses a method and a device for the automatic avoidance of collisions for automatically controllable vehicles. With the aid of this method and device, in danger situations caused by obstacles, the intention is to carry out a collision-avoiding acceleration, braking and/or evasive maneuver using an automatic collision avoidance system. This is accomplished by a hierarchically constructed method and by an associated device, data of the vehicle and its setpoint path being acquired by sensors, and setpoint signals of the vehicle path ascertained therefrom being fed to a second hierarchical step of a collision-avoidance device together with the data of an obstacle path acquired, for example, by sensors, and above that, in a third hierarchical step, the final controlling elements of the vehicle control are triggered along the lines of a collision avoidance.